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We are supposed to run 12 to 13 miles this weekend. On Friday we decided Sunday would be the best day. After all, Ladybug had gotten sick Thursday night and we wanted her to have more of a chance to feel better. It's not a good idea to take a sick kid on a 2 hour journey through the country in 40 degree weather. She was feeling much better today and things were looking up (although she doesn't quite have her old appetite back yet). Further, the forecast for today was pouring rain all day. It's not the best running weather. So, Sunday was looking great with a high around 50, albeit cloudy. With the kiddo being better, we are set, right?

Not so much. Little Green Eyes is now down for the count. Poor thing is miserable with a fever and he puked his guts out all over Nick tonight.

So, we need a new plan on the most crucial run of our entire training program. It's simply not going to happen this week. I don't want to run 13 miles in the country by myself and t…

One of the issues we need to work on with our house is curb appeal. Unfortunately, the previous owners didn't layout the driveway to take advantage of the site's natural attributes. They sited the driveway in the least aesthetically pleasing location. In fact as you approach the property all you see is the utilitarian side of the house where our garage and shed are located. There is a door and stoop on that side of the house to further confuse folks into believing that the side door might actually be the front door. As you drive in, you are never able to appreciate the front of the house. This problem is probably why we got such a great deal on the house. Most people can't see beyond that.

Luckily, we have some vision. I figured that we could do some relatively simple things to resolve the awkward site arrangement. I think the first thing we need to do is close the unnecessarily large swath created by the home's construction. Clearly, little was done during …

There's not much going on here lately. I've been keeping busy with playdates and couponing. Today, Nick got off of work early to do a move-related errand so while he did that I got a chance to run on my own without the kiddos. Good times.

When I got back, of course Green Eyes was already up from his very brief cat nap (he needs far less sleep than Ladybug to my chagrin.) Unfortunately, he inherited his father's sleeping habits. Even I need more sleep than the little guy does.

I haven't been to K-mart in years. I would have probably made it another several years if I hadn't learned thanks to Hot Coupon World (HCW) that the store was having this SUPER double coupons sale (i.e. they are doubling coupons up to 2 bucks). I don't know what bugs me about the store so much, but I thought I'd give it a go. They have made a lot of changes since I last went. The store looked nicer then I remembered.

Anyway, this sale was soooo good that my heart was racing in the store. Here are SOME of the deals and the break down (BEFORE the 5 bucks off coupon!).

Nick and I never like to call companies and complain. When Nick opened his 525,998thhotpocket on July 8, 2008 and he found there was no filling inside of it we never thought hey, maybe we should contact the company and let 'em know. Rather, he took a picture of it and eyed it with utter amazement. See below. I found the pictures amongst Green Eye's newborn photos. Wow, huh?

So the other day, thanks to Hot Coupon World (HCW), I discovered this is a major faux pas and I'm just throwing money out the window letting these sorts of things slide. I spent roughly and hour writing companies either complaining (as in the Hot Pocket incident) or cheering (mostly cheering) about their products in the hopes of receiving coupons. I asked them to to be on their special promotions mailing list, etc. As a result, I received a gazillion coupons in the mail this week.

You can find a list of companies to write for coupons at HCW here. There are at least 100 on that list and I'…

**TMI** Warning on this post. Today we ran our recovery run. That means we lowed our mileage by two miles and took it easy in preparation for a jump in mileage next week. After that run we will taper down until the big day. The bulk of our training is complete already. I'm psyched because I thought this would be a lot harder to do during the middle of winter. Actually, it's a lot easier to get our base mileage down. Having done it under the scorching sun in Albuquerque and the oppressive humidity of Virginian summers, this has definitely been the easiest. I'm actually learning to love winter again, go figure. (The high is supposed to be 50 today, but we were running in the morning when the temps were only in the high 30's-low 40's.)

On the way today, Nick's toes began to bleed. Guess it isn't training until your toenails start to turn black and fall off. Nick lost two toenails last time, and I lost the same. No injuries so far for me this go round…

I've had to adjust to this no more coupons in the paper thing. Luckily, there is a lot out there on the internet. So, last night I went printing away in preparation for going out today.

I didn't go to my usual Kroger. The sales weren't that great this week. So, I went to Harris Teeter (HT) instead. I did all of my shopping and I got into the cashier line. The woman rings it up and what do you know, the cashier says she may not be able to take them as they are going to start limiting internet coupons. WTH? I mean, where are the coupons going to come from if not in the paper anymore? Duh, HT, they are going to come from the internet!! So now they are going to limit those too? The manager told her to go ahead and ring all of them up. Close call. They never did tell me the exact number limit but I guess my order didn't reach it. I had twelve.

Anyway...

I scored some really great buys at Harris Teeter. I kind of thought that place was unnecessarily expensive but…

After watching the "nanerpus" commercial repeatedly over the course of the last two days Nick had a hankering for what- do-ya-know, "all you can eat" pancakes. So, we celebrated this glorious day with a big stack of pancakes and turkey sausage. Of course I made them my way (the healthy way) but Nick didn't mind. He loves these bad boys.

Sometimes I add a couple cups of water to thin them out a bit, especially if I make it the night before and all the oats to absorb the water. This will result in a different texture to your pancake but we like them both ways. You can also had a couple tablespoons to a quarter cup of flax seed meal to make them all the more heart healthy. You won't taste the difference, but your heart will love you…

"Every Sunday, faithful coupon users open up their local Sunday newspaper and look for one thing, the coupon inserts. That has all changed now the one of the coupon insert distributors has decided to pull their inserts from local newspapers. RedPlum, also known as Valassis has switched from providing their coupon inserts in the newspaper to mailing them directly to consumers."

I'm not sure if we are in week 5 or 6. In any case, we accomplished 11 miles today and are well on our way to be ready for the half-marathon race in March. We may even do an additional one in April. While Nick and I lost weight while training for our 2nd marathon (as we hope to for this itty bitty half), that wasn't the case for the first marathon. In fact, I gained five pounds with the first. At the time, I blamed it on Nick's pecan waffles. I was pretty fit already and I just wanted to do the marathon to keep fit and check it off of my "to do" list. I kind of beat myself up for gaining that five pounds. I mean, how in the world does someone gain 5 pounds training for a marathon? Come to find out, the body will cause you to retain water to accomodate the intense work outs! Who knew?! I was beating myself up for nothing. Find an excerpt from a Spark People article below:

It's true that many people either gain a little weight or don't see any c…

I removed some of the posts about our runs. I did this so I could link our Facebook account to our blog account and "go public." That means I had to clean up any detailed personal information, like where we run, etc. The feeds of our blog on Facebook are abbreviated feeds and the blog will need to be opened to see the full content. Simply click on "view the original post" for the full content.

I'm not much of a traditional romantic. I think Valentine's Day is a bunch of bunk. I just don't think you need a special day to spread love.

But, I guess the holiday is what you make of it. Though every year I tell Nick that I refuse to celebrate, he always does and so do I, in some small way.

Below is a pic of the chocolate strawberries Nick greeted me with tonight. They were a complete surprise. Words can not describe how wonderful they are. If I had a last meal, these would be included.

I made Nick his favorite meal (flat-out pizzas) and broccoli and made a bunch of the rice krispie treats. He is easy to please. The heart bowl cost me 98 cents a few years ago and I keep using it. So that's how much I'm willing to invest in the holiday.

Today, Ladybug and I practiced writing x's and o's.

Here is a pic from last weekend of my nephew eating Sushi for the first time. I think it was tuna or salmon. We were out celebrating my sister's birthday.

So this morning, Nick and I had a nice adventure. It was bound to happen eventually living in the sticks. I mean, it's happened to our dogs a number of times and it was bound to happen to one of us. It's been 8 months since we've been here. Admittedly, I thought it was a summer thing, not something that would happen in February. Then again, it's 70 degrees today. It was 68 yesterday and for that matter, the whole week has been rather mild.

When Nick hopped out of the shower, I noticed what I thought was some kind of boil on his side. Alas, we were not that lucky. Upon close inspection, it was a tick. I hate ticks. They are disgusting little critters. We used the old vaseline method. It worked wonders, I extracted it and let Nick burn it. I guess my training at grandma's house did some good. I used to spend a week or two every summer with her and my grandpa in Caroline County and every summer one of of us would get a ti…

Funny thing in regards to Nick's post is that this was all Nick's idea. But this is what I call one of Nick's "Tomato Pie" ideas. These are ideas that are good, but not necessarily for him.

For those of you who have not heard this story, let me tell you what I mean by a Tomato Pie Idea.When Nick and I were first dating, I told him I would make him dinner. "What do you want?," I asked. After no real response I told him I saw this cool recipe on Paula Deen for a tomato pie. He said, "That sounds good." Well, I go and make him dinner and what do you know, he hates tomatoes. You see, when he said that it sounded good, what he really meant was that it sounded good for people who like tomatoes. So, I guess the same goes here. At this point, I may consider dismantling.

Anyway, speaking of tomatoes and vegetables, we have selected the crops we are planting this year. Our goal is to plant stuff that is expensive for us to buy in the store but …

I just saw an ad for the potty dance. I have no idea what brand of diapers it was for.

Merritt always wants me to write on this thing. I tell her I write all day at work, so I don't really want to write when I get home, but I'll try to appease her here.

I went outside to for a vision quest. A lot of stuff was moving around in our forest. Probably turkeys, we have a lot of wild turkeys around here. The moon is bright enough out there that it seems to dim out lamba orionis, the head of Orion. Orion is the best constellation, the rest (save the big dipper) are all posers. I may lack vision. By the way, if you don't follow stellar astrophysics, Orion's right shoulder (on the left from our view) is Betelgeuse (Bettlejuice--at least that is how I pronouce it), a red supergiant with a diameter greater than the diameter of the orbit of Mars. If that is not cool enough the middle star of Orion's belt is M42, the Orion Nebula. Thanks Star Hustler (remember that guy o…

I mentioned this to a friend on the phone today. Perhaps you find this equally disturbing?

I have a problem with the new Hallmark Valentine's Ad. Have you seen it? The ad consists of 3 little girls, age 9 or 10 or so. They open their lunch for the day, on Valentine's Day. One girl gets hearts on her apple from her mom. Another girl gets a sandwich cut in the shape of a heart from her mom. Then the third girl gets a Hannah Montana card with music in it. Oh, wow!!! Your mom really cares.

What message does this send? Like most commercials, it places an emphasis on money and material over true love and care. Personally, I find the time and care the other moms went to making those special sandwiches and snacks more touching, but I'm not an impressionable youngster who believes what he/she sees on TV. The card is meant to make parents like me want to go an purchase this card to show I care more then the other moms but it sends and equally upsetting message to youngster…

Today I got some killer deals. Of course, the cashier scared me again. Before he would take the coupons he said he had to clear them with the manager. Oh geez! Thankfully, they took them. His manager told them that they aren't taking internet coupons if they are black and white now. Thank goodness I printed in color.

FREE TP, AGAIN!!!! I bought 3 things of it.

Yoplain yo plus - on sale for $2, minus $1.50 coupon and $-1.00 e-coupon =made .50 centsI did that twice. Then I bought another one and just used a $1.00 internet coupon. Total 3 FREE packages of Yo plus yogurt.

Below is a pic of our bedroom during the beginning stages of painting. At an ungodly hour in the morning, we went to bed on an inflatable bed in our sun room to avoid the fumes and so as not to disturb Green Eyes in his room. It was bad planning on our part, but we ended up enjoying it more. It was kind of like we were kids again and we gazed at the stars for a bit. We just love it out here.

The next day (clean up) was less fun. I will post a picture of the paint color in the bedroom later. We still have some things to hang and some furniture to move around.

I also completed a mini side project: a magnetic chalk board. Nick hates it when I add on to what seems to be an already impossible amount of work but I couldn't help myself. I mean, we were painting anyway right? One little 28"x52" area can't add that much work.

Five coats later, (3 coats of magnetic paint every 30 minutes followed by two layers of chalk board paint every 4-8 hours and another 24 hours to…

We completed one item off of our to-do list tonight. We painted our bedroom a sand color and painted the base of the magnetic chalk board. The bedroom color is a calming one that compliments the dusty blues in our bedding and the paint color in our bath. I wanted a color that will allow me to change the scheme at any given moment if I feel like it.

As mentioned prior, there is always a price to pay for knocking things off the to-do list. Tonight it will be lack of sleep. I will post pics tomorrow. Right now, it's 2 AM (for some reason my posts are showing up with the time wrong), and everything looks kind of trashy and I'm tired and I'm sure Nolan will be ready to be fed at 6 in the morning.

Society6

ABOUT ME

I went plant-strong in January of 2012 . I'm a former landscape architect now SAHM. I spend most of my time experimenting in the kitchen and garden, learning new photography tricks, keeping active as best I know how and chasing after three little dirt devils.